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Citing an “abundance of caution,” the Rev. James Cooper of Trinity Church said the Episcopal parish at Broadway and Wall Street in Manhattan has canceled it popular Halloween activities due to safety issues arising from a sidewalk encampment in front of the place of worship.

“Canceling a beloved family event is not a decision taken lightly,” Cooper said in a statement issued Sunday. “Last year, more than 1,200 people took part. However, we are deeply concerned about the escalating illegal and abusive activity the camp presents.”

Linda Hanick, a spokeswoman for Trinity Church, said nine people have been arrested in connection to the encampment in the past two weeks, including a man who was arrested after he put an air horn to the ear of a longtime maintenance superintendent at the church on Oct. 11. The maintenance worker was “traumatized” by the incident, she said.

“The sidewalk is owned by the city, so we don’t have the legal power to remove people from the sidewalk, but it’s our responsibility to clean it,” she said. “We hose down the sidewalk and throw away the trash.”

Those cleanings, which occur twice daily at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., typically lead to a “tense situation,” Hanick said.

“They will only get up if a white shirt — a lieutenant — is there,” she said. “It becomes a tense situation.”

The unidentified man was arrested and returned to the encampment the following day, said Hanick, adding that church officials have recently installed eight security cameras to monitor activity nearby. Anywhere from 25 to 50 people are camped outside at any given time, she said.

A majority of those in the encampment appear to be homeless people who are resisting placement and have seemingly attached themselves to the Occupy movement, Hanick said.

[…]

A New York Police Department spokesman said there have been 18 arrests in the vicinity of Trinity Church since the last big “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration on Sept. 17. Aaron Williams, 20, the man who allegedly blasted the air horn in the ear of the church custodian, was charged with assault, menacing and disorderly conduct.

The other 17 arrests, which took place over the past month, were for mainly for disorderly conduct and open container violations. Several of the suspects had been previously arrested at “Occupy” events, according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Why haven’t the repeat offenders be banned from the property? This is outrageous.

Please stop calling them ‘OWS’, they are nothing more than anarcists and communists. Trouble makers and pests! Urinators and shiters! Pigs and swine! Call them out for what they really are…SCUM! Lower than DIRT! Lower than the worms that roam the dirt! Lower than the excriment that is emitted from the worms that roam the dirt! They aren’t “OWS punks”, they are SHIT!

@Bill, you are right! Don’t apologize for telling the truth. We still have “occupy” here in Oakland and SF and very little is done about it. Sure, from time to time, someone goes too far and they have a clash with the police and arrests are made. My question is why are they allowed to stay there in the first place? This is not “First Amendment” rights stuff at all. We have the freedom of speech and, IMHO, that doesn’t include camping, littering, doing drugs, having sex and using the bushes for a toilet. How is all of that anything at all to do with free speech? It doesn’t. Yet, the liberal elected city fathers (okay, Quan is female – lol) allow this! Between murders and violent crime on the streets of Oakland and the OWSF and homeless in SF, tourism is way down. I don’t want to go there and I only live 50 miles away. Just infuriates me.